Are You...
Making Mealtimes A Battleground?
Stubborn or Safe?
Go On, Just Try It!..
On the supermarket shelves all food is safe to eat, but in nature safe foods sit side by side with deadly poisons.
For most of human evolution, rejecting foods we didn't know were safe would have been a very good survival strategy.
Imagine yourself walking through a beautiful autumnal forest with a friend. Suddenly they bend down and pick some kind of mushroom from the forest floor. They hand it to you and suggest you give it a try to see if you like it.
I don't know about you, but I think I would politely decline.
Most of us know enough about mushrooms to know that some are extremely nutritious while others can kill us. Most of us also know we can't say for certain which is which.
Luckily we don't need to.
These days our food comes neatly packaged and labelled from the supermarket. We have learnt to trust the Food Standards Agency and the retailers and the Use By Dates. Shops and supermarkets wouldn't knowingly sell us something that was going to kill us.
We know those things, but our young children don't. They know nothing about Food Standards Agencies and Use By Dates they need to learn for themselves what is safe and what is not.
Are we asking our children to go against a deep rooted survival instinct?
When we warn a child to keep away from deep water we are likely to be in accord with their natural instincts. Doing so is unlikely to cause a deep stress reaction in them.
When we persuade, cajole, bribe or otherwise coerce our children to try a food that they haven't learnt is safe we are potentially asking them to bypass deep rooted instincts for survival.
Imagine the stress that might be causing.
Is it any wonder they can be so stubborn?
Is it any wonder they get so upset?
"Daddy, Am I Going To Die?" - My Personal Wake Up Call
Like so many parents my wife and I thought we were doing rather well when first introducing our daughter to solids. Like most babies she enjoyed exploring everything we put in front of her.
Of course, I had been warned that there would be a 'picky' stage, but nothing really prepared me for the first refusal, let alone the next and the next.
As hard as I tried, her repertoire of acceptable foods gradually dwindled. Introducing new ones was just about impossible.
At the same time, my anxiety levels gradually increased.
As I now know, I was getting just about everything wrong. How come nobody told me?!!
The turning point came when she was about three and half.
She had recently started pre-school and was staying for lunch for the first time.
I was used to her being clingy and tearful when I dropped her off, but on this day she was in floods of tears when I picked her up.
When she eventually calmed down enough to explain what was wrong, she said:
"Daddy, it was pasta for lunch and I don't like pasta, so I didn't eat any. Daddy, am I going to die?"
We had been reading her 'Encyclopedia of the Body' at breakfast. It was one of her favourite books at the time. As usual we talked about about babies and poo. This time, when talking about the journey food goes on to become poo I happened to mention that if we don't eat we will die. I didn't think to say 'eventually, after a month or so'!
Now she was sobbing in my arms, scared she was going to die that day.
Once I had managed to reassure her that she wouldn't die from missing just one meal, I started to reflect on what could be so powerful for her that she would risk death rather than eat something she didn't like.
I didn't know the answer, but I was determined to help her the best I could.
Thankfully I stumbled across a brilliant book called "Helping Your Child with Extreme Picky Eating" by Katja Rowell and Jenny McGlothlin.
Through it, I learnt that in fact she wasn't actually an 'extreme' picky eater, for all that she was picky, but I went ahead and applied their recommended approach regardless.
It not only helped me to reverse the mistakes I'd made in the first few years of our daughters life, but eventually informed just about every aspect of my parenting.
Specifically, it taught me to back off getting my daughter to try things and instead to help her feel safe around food.
Most importantly, it taught me to help her feel in total control of what she chose to put in her mouth.
While teaching a child to swim, we keep them safe at all times. If we do the same with food, our children will gradually open up and try new things.
It takes years for a child to learn to swim well enough for us to feel they are safe around water.
Until then we restrict the depth of water they can be in, we give them arm bands and floats, we watch them like a hawk, we give them tuition and plenty of encouragement.
Eating is potentially just as dangerous and just as difficult. Modern life makes learning about food far more difficult than at any point in history. It can take years for children to learn to feel safe around food.
But when they do, assuming we haven't done too much damage along the way, they will gradually open up to new experiences.
Until that time comes we can no more tell them what is safe to eat than we can tell them to jump in the deep end and swim.
So, if we cant just tell them, how do we teach our young children what is safe to eat?
Remember, young children do not refuse to eat things just to wind us up!
Created 12/03/2019
Last Updated 16/06/2019
